


Filing Room 57

by entanglednow



Series: 13 Days of Halloween [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Demons, Gen, Ghosts, Holy Water, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27097876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: Filing room 57 looks like any of the other filing rooms in Hell, but Crowley knows better.
Series: 13 Days of Halloween [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977847
Comments: 94
Kudos: 257
Collections: Racket’s 13 Days of Halloween





	Filing Room 57

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'Ghosts' prompt, for the 13 Days of Halloween list of prompts, made by racketghost. I've been having so much fun trying to write 13 scary stories. I've had a go at a bunch of different genres, themes and levels of horror, and I'm hoping some of them will be at least a little bit spooky.

Filing room 57 looks like any of the other filing rooms in Hell.

It's grubby and damp and the temperature swings between hot enough to curl the paper and cold enough to send your fingers numb. There are nicotine stains on all the folders, and rings of coffee that no one ever drinks on too many of the so-called important documents. Dark layers of ash and grime lay thick on every overstuffed filing cabinet and rotting table, ready to puff into choking clouds at the slightest disturbance.

But unlike the other rooms along the same corridor, filing room 57 is kept locked at all times.

It hadn't even had a lock to start with, it hadn't been a filing room at all. It had originally been a hollowed-out storeroom with a creaking wooden door that only latched from the inside. But locks had become necessary, and Crowley has been bringing them from earth since their invention.

Dagon keeps the key to the room in her breast pocket, and only hands it out as a punishment. Though no one gets sent there for stupid mistakes, for wilful disobedience or disrespect. No, that was expected behaviour from a crush of bored demons. That would just net you a few dozen extra lashes, or maybe a month cleaning the Hellhound pits. No, you knew exactly what you'd done to have Dagon reaching into her pocket. To have her saying in that grating voice ' _go to filing room 57, sit at the table there, fill in all of these forms._ '

Crowley doesn't know how many of them actually know what's inside the room. Secrets are hard to keep in Hell, but the hollow-eyed, silent demons that do manage one of Hell's treacly slow days inside - though most of them return to work eventually - they're reluctant to talk. It doesn't stop the rumours though, the sickly spread of suggestions and theories about what could possibly need to be so carefully locked away. 

The lights in 57 don't flicker. They're kept bright enough to throw the grime and the disarray of the shelves and tables into sharp detail, bright enough that none of the corners can hold a shadow.

The last time Crowley had been inside the room was 1782. He'd needed a parchment that some idiot had left in there, family history, demonic bargains, last seen folded and slipped into a blue book covered in oil stains. But when he'd stepped inside he'd found its cover torn in two and its pages left scattered under a table, evidence that the last demon here had fled the room. The scorch marks are still visible on the floor, from where they'd almost torn themself free of their corporation in their desperation to leave.

There are rules against leaving things in the room now. A set of wax cylinders left in there in 1904 had been wiped of their original content and had instead played what sounded like the loud rush of wind, a static popping, and the slow and unsettling sound of something tearing, over and over. Then there was the Polaroid camera in 1986. Crowley had the unfortunate honour of being there when it was found, knocked over and smoking among a spread of charred and scattered pictures. Though there'd been no film loaded in the camera, and more white squares across the floor than it was designed to hold. From some angles the photos had looked like they showed a dark empty space, from others the blurry stretch of an open mouth, caught in an endless scream. Dagon had burned the pictures in Hellfire, and forbade anyone from leaving anything in the room.

It's not easier knowing what's in there, knowing how long it's been in there, knowing that it may be in there forever. Nothing about that is easy. But Crowley knows that it can't hurt him, not physically.

He remembers Menok. He'd been a lower ranked demon, not very bright and not very friendly, but he had liked to be useful, he'd liked to get on with things. He'd been left sorting through scrolls taken from the library of Alexandria. There'd been a small, stoppered pot attached to one of them, and Menok had thought nothing of tugging the stopper free to see what was inside. Apparently they'd heard him screaming three levels down. The high-pitched, impossible shrieks that thinned and broke, and then stopped completely.

Crowley hadn't been in Hell at the time, but he'd heard the story eventually, hurried out reluctantly in pieces by those who'd seen, or heard. It wasn't a memory people were eager to share.

Demons and Angels cannot die. They are eternal creatures made by God Herself.

Holy Water doesn't destroy a demon, not really. What it does do is sanctify the pieces of them, all the threads that make up their true selves. The writhing mass of energy and consciousness is left splintered and shattered irreparably. Holy Water stops them from being able to form themselves together again. They simply exist, forever separate, forever in uncountable pieces.

He doesn't think anyone's certain of how aware Menok is. Whether all those pieces of him can still process and think and feel. If they understand what happened to them, or if they're simply a vast cloud of raw nerves and terror.

But since Armageddon, Crowley's been keeping the lights in his flat brighter than usual, pushing the doors shut when he leaves a room. He's been checking the mirrors and the windows for cracks, and he no longer leaves his phone on the desk overnight.

Just in case.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Filing Room 57](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27224029) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




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